Nearly 200 of the job cuts planned by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) could come from corporate services – including human resources – causing a “detrimental impact” on Britain’s front line, the department’s main union has warned.

Yet the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) has warned that 180 job cuts will be made from financial, facilities, personnel and admin roles, forcing military line managers to attempt to do HR’s job with no training or competence in the role.

Paul Barnsley, national officer at PCS, told Personnel Today: “Military line managers need to be freed up from work to focus on the front line rather than doing HR, which they’re not trained to do, aren’t competent to do because of a lack of training, and have no interest in doing. There will be a detrimental impact on the front line.”

Around 12,000 jobs have already gone at the MoD in the past three years across a range of areas, including defence logistics, procurement, IT, and Armed Forces training. Staff are already hugely overworked, according to Barnsley, who warned that “further cuts would be absolutely disastrous”.

The MoD said that any talk of job cuts related to HR was “speculation”.